REWORK

I have a dream job…unfortunately it is still in my mind, but the job that I have now has that potential. Reading books like Rework fuel my desire for a better working environment. I can work my butt off all day and sometimes by 4:00 I am spent. I have given my all for that day, but really don’t feel comfortable leaving before 5:00. Starting a new project would be rather pointless as I am not at my freshest.

“Workaholics make the people who don’t stay late feel inadequate for ‘merely’ working reasonable hours. That leads to guilt and poor morale all around and leads to ass-in-seat mentality.” [see my above comments]

Authors Jason Fried and David Hansson have written a book that provides a blueprint for a better career life. Working better and smarter rather than longer is the mantra. The authors take this to heart as the average length of a section is about two pages. Many of the ideas have been out there, but this may be the best presentation.

On meetings…”they often include at least one moron who inevitable gets his turn to waste everyone’s time with nonsense.” Where I used to work his name was Larry. Larry was usually good for extending meetings for 30 minutes.

On saying yes…”Start getting into the habit of saying no – even to many of your best ideas. Use the power of no to get your priorities straight.”

On enthusiasm…”So let your latest grand ideas cool off for a while first. By all means, have as many great ideas as you can. Get excited about them. Just don’t act in the heat of the moment.” On my first day of work, my boss unloaded all of his ideas for me to pursue. I have still not gotten to start many of them.

On marketing…”Do you have a marketing department? If not, good…Just as you cannot not communicate, you cannot not market.” Essentially every employee markets.

On writing…”Too much time in academia can actually do you harm…It’s no wonder so much business writing winds up dry, wordy, and dripping with nonsense. People are just continuing the bad habits they picked up in school…There are a lot of skills that are useful in academia that aren’t worth much outside of it.”

On business focus…”The core of your business should be built around things that won’t change. Things that people are going to want today and ten years from now. Those are the things you should invest in.” One piece of software that I use is a video editing program. It has a simple, basic interface and early versions had some stability problems. They have fixed that, but they keep upgrading and upgrading with stuff that I do not use. I don’t think that I ever used every bell and whistle from the first version. I don’t even consider the new versions.

On rock stars and a rock star environment…”The environment has a lot more to do with great work than most people realize…Cut the crap and you’ll find that people are waiting to do great work. They just need to be given the chance…if they [casual Fridays] are such good things, then why aren’t you doing them every day of the week?”

I Loved This Book and will surely read it again and again. You should too.